Iraqi Christians won’t be celebrating Christmas this year. Midnight mass, the centrepiece of Christmas festivities in Iraq, has been cancelled because of night-time curfews. Few will be showing up to church on Christmas morning, scared that insurgents who have bombed churches, mosques and Muslim religious festivals, will strike again.

“We usually go to midnight mass and then a celebration and then we go home where the family gathers for dinner,” said Bushra Gorjis, 31, a cleaner. “This year we are not going to church because everyone is scared of the terrorists.” While Iraq’s Christian minority, some three percent of the population, had little power under Saddam Hussein, they were free to worship without the threat of sectarian violence.

A guard armed with an assault rifle rocks back and forth on his chair outside the imposing gateway of Our Lady of Salvation Syrian Catholic Church in Baghdad’s Karrada district.

The building is ringed with barbed wire and concrete blocks to stop cars from parking too close. They were set up after August 1, when the church was one of five in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul hit in coordinated attacks which killed 12 people. The bombs detonated during early evening prayers when pews were packed, clearly intended to inflict maximum casualties.

Bombings of churches, like attacks on mosques and Muslim shrines, have been nothing unusual in Iraq since. Five Baghdad churches were bombed on the October 16 start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Eight were killed in two church bombings on November 8. A car bomb exploded near police guarding the hospital where the wounded had been taken. Once avid churchgoers, only the most devout of Iraq’s 650,000 Christians, now venture to mass, even on Sunday.

The Seventh Day Adventist church in Baghdad has not opened its doors to worshippers since a bomb shattered its stained glass windows and set part of the building ablaze in September. The church, its huge arched windows still boarded up, will remain closed on Christmas Day. The pastor will instead visit parishioners in their homes to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago.

At Baghdad’s Virgin Mary Church, hundreds of worshippers used to spill into staircases and aisles during midnight mass and Christmas Day rites. This year the mood will be more sombre. “Christian churches are not officially celebrating Christmas this year,” said Father Boutros Haddad. “All we will have are morning prayers in which we will ask the heavens to return to Iraq the peace the angels brought to earth when Jesus was born.”

No one is booking restaurants, hotels and clubs for traditional Christmas parties this year. Iraqi Christians, most from the early Assyrian and Chaldean churches, say they will celebrate at home. Even there, trees festooned with coloured lights and dancing Santa Claus dolls sit well away from windows. No one wants to invite trouble.

“We feel like there is no Christmas this year. We cannot go anywhere. We haven’t prepared any special food,” said Raad, who was too scared to give his second name.

<B>Low key celebration</B>

Iraqi Christians have always kept a low political profile, aware of the precariousness of their position in a country dominated by Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim Arabs and Kurds. Even before churches became targets, attacks on liquor stores, music shops and hairdressers were common.

Women were increasingly harassed in the street for exposing their hair or skin, raising Christian fears they would be singled out by Islamic extremists who have gained influence since last year’s US-led war toppled the secular Baathist government. The chaos has left Iraqis of all religions feeling scared.

But some Christians, proud of their roots in Iraq which long pre-date the seventh century arrival of Islam, feel especially vulnerable because of the perception that their religion gives them something in common with the Americans occupying Iraq. William Warda, spokesman for the Assyrian Democratic Movement, said both Muslims and Christians were targets.

“When they kill a professor or hit an oil pipeline they are hitting all of Iraq; it is a conspiracy to divide the country. But Christians are a weak link as we have no power, militias and tribal structure,” Warda said. “We hope people vote because with an elected government they will no longer be able to complain about occupation.”

Elections are not until January 30 and shops selling artificial Christmas trees, sparkly baubles and golden bells say business was never so bad. No one is in the mood to celebrate. “Usually, I would have run out of decorations by now, but this year no one is buying,” said Setta, whose Silva Flowers shop is lined with red poinsettias and decorated trees. “We are living in Iraq, the land of war, not New York. We even played down our own decorations this year in case someone comes and blows us up.”

<B>Lin Noueihed</B>